


his hand on the glass

by pifflapodus_scriptor



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:27:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pifflapodus_scriptor/pseuds/pifflapodus_scriptor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako goes to jail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	his hand on the glass

**Author's Note:**

> written for Makorra month on Tumblr for the prompt "lovers reunited after 10 years"

Mako's hand is on the glass between them.

Her voice fills him and he would drink it from her mouth, he would sleep forever to the early morning rhythm of her words, he would shape himself to her like they used to do and drift between each beat of her heart. But he can’t, he can't; he can only leave the damp breath of his palm print on the glass between them, and Korra can leave hers, and it fades like a sigh and vanishes.

_Mako, on the single charge of murder in the second degree, we find you guilty, and hereby sentence you to…_

Ten years. Ten years and Korra wants to wait for him. Mako's life is a long, slow fever of cages, a dream of iron bars and bricks. When is Bolin coming to visit? She tells him that Bolin is busy, and what she means is he’s not coming, not yet, not until he can forgive what his brother has done.

And Korra visits him and puts her hand on the glass between them and Mako tells her - _leave me. Go find someone else. Stop waiting for me._

She gets angry when he says that and so she storms out, head high, eyes low; and Mako knows she’ll come back, she always comes back, the Avatar has endless lives to live and so they have all the time in the world to come back. But there will only ever be one Korra and he has eight years left and he doesn’t want her to wait, he doesn’t deserve it. He asks the guard to be taken back, please, and he stares at the wall until the lights go out. _Don't wait for me,_ but she does.

Mako counts off each day, each hour, each minute, one by one, one by one by one, until they break down into seconds that burn on him like cigarette ash, dropped from the bright cherry tips of his slim dry regrets. His thoughts, each word a white-hot flake that blisters: _why did I - I’m not sorry - I wish I hadn’t - she shouldn’t, she can't!_ She brings him cigarettes and slips notes inside the cardboard cartons and he reads them and saves all of them. Each scrap of paper is a piece of her and he can imagine her furrowing her brow, biting on her lip, the pen pressed tight in her fine fingers, as she writes - _I love you, I love you, I love you_ , over and over again, and the ink is sometimes smeared with little grey clouds, like a storm broke in her hands.

He won’t blame her if she moves on, he won’t. Mako will not commit that crime against her. And yet, she doesn’t, and he curls himself around the thought late at night, when it’s cold and the blanket is thin and the other men are hissing and muttering on either side of his waking moments. Mako gives his scarf to the guard - _take this away, I can’t wear it anymore._ So the thought of her is what keeps him warm. It shines like a star in his hands and he holds it close, when his soul turns and turns awake through the long restless hours.

The other men like to ask _how's your whore, is she tight, is she loud, does she moan? Hey Mako, I'm getting out of here in a week, I bet if she gets a good fuck from me, she'll forget about you real quick_ \- And he gives them what they want, a good fight, until his knuckles are chapped with blood and his lips split and scar. He doesn't care who he fights; he just needs it to hurt. But he stops when he has to tell Korra that the blood on his shirt isn't his, and he can barely see the ache on her face through his own bruised reflection on the glass.

There are five years left and finally Bolin comes. Bolin visits and sits behind the glass with his eyes like jade chips and says _why did you do it?_ And Mako says - y _ou weren’t there when Mom and Dad died, I just lost control, but he’s gone now. I found him. He can’t hurt our family anymore._

But Bolin says _no, he’s not the one who hurt it this time._ And Mako sees his brother, his beautiful eyes streaked with the green earth in springtime, with a new sorrow blooming, growing lush in the rich loam where his old love was hidden.

He puts his hand on the glass and says: _please, Bo, you have to understand_ \- and Bolin doesn’t, at first, but Korra brings him back and sometimes they come together and it makes it easier, so much easier, to see his brother there, just to hear his voice.

And when she comes alone, Korra tells him things, about the places she’s been going, about the astral glow that hums across the black polar skies, what the Water Tribes call the silk spun from stars, and they brush the snow-covered land in pink and green. And she tells him about the desert, the rolling dunes burnt yellow; they shift and change, shift and change, but they are always made of the same things and the harshest, driest winds can’t change that.

He has three years left and Korra is changing, her face changes, her voice changes, her eyes stay the same. What does she feel like now? Like sun-dried leather, tough and creased? Are her hands coarse with the wrinkles of a hundred conflicts, will they take what little he offers her? What is the color of her love when there is no glass between them? He can’t tell and so he asks her - what will she do when he stands in front of a door and waits for permission to go through it? When the scheduled hours break apart and he is lost between them? When he plummets from sleep at night, races past days gone by, slams awake onto the shards of sharp memory? When his body is free, but his mind is not?

_I’ll understand,_ Korra says, and Mako doesn't believe her, his anger seeps into him, cracks him open. His armored endurance shatters on the lance point of all the things he hates: he hates prison, he hates her, he hates himself. _Stop waiting for me, get out of here, just get on with your life already! Don’t waste your life on me!_

_I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes, and I have a thousand left to live. I’m going to wait for you._

Korra puts her hand on the glass and he traces the lines there, his fingertips sliding down the surface; his other hand is on his eyes, full of rain. If only he could touch her, just once, and then this wouldn’t be so bad. The night would be less lonely, emptier of that deep furious fire that burns and chars him on the inside, leaves a shell full of bones but nothing else, just a blackness. There is a long stretch of time where he doesn’t read, doesn’t eat, doesn’t talk, doesn’t move; he does nothing but sleep.

Now there are two years left, and she visits; and one year left, and she visits. Then there are seven months, and three months, and two weeks, and five days, and the hours hurtle by at an agonizing pace, the relentless unseen creep of glaciers. Mako lives through them in a daze, a fog, shot through with a sleet of uncertainty. What if he wakes up tomorrow and there are still nine years left? But at last his thoughts are unchained, they are free, they soar on the thought of her. Her name is the wind.

And now there is a buzzer and a door opens: _Go ahead, son. Here are your things. One coat, a pair of gloves, and a scarf._

Korra is standing there in the hallway, in the afternoon sunlight, cast in pale gold as flecks of dust float up the air, and Bolin is with her.

And there is no glass between them and Mako puts his hand up, just to make sure, but it's finally gone and his palm is full of the strong curve of her face, full of warmth and her smile.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,” he says, he can’t look at anything except her feet.

“But I wanted to,” Korra says, taking his hand, clasping it between hers.

“You didn't have to - ”

“But I did, because I love you,” Korra says, and she jumps onto him, her whole self in his arms, and kisses him, sings through him with all the pealing bell tones of a reckless girl in love. She hasn’t changed a bit.

And Mako has never held so much life all at once, he is wrapped in the folds of the summer sun, he is bursting and flaring with love, and all the cold untouched hours catch fire and loop and thread around them.

He will deserve this, someday, and Mako wakes up the next morning with Korra’s arms around him and her face pressed into the valley of his neck. Her every breath is a verse of love, rippling the still air. He waited ten years for this, but it was nothing, nothing at all. He would wait a thousand more.


End file.
